Recently discovered tapes of EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt confirm what the Freedom From Religion Foundation has been asserting all along.
Recordings have surfaced of Pruitt attacking evolution, advocating for a constitutional ban on gay marriage and abortion, and claiming that Christianity is under attack in America and being driven out of the “public square.”
At FFRF, we’re not surprised. We know Pruitt. We dealt with him several times as Oklahoma attorney general. We tried to warn the U.S. Senate that it would be confirming an incorrigible theocrat.
Politico broke the story of the tapes on Friday, and the scandal has been snowballing. In the recordings, Pruitt can be heard saying things like, “There aren’t sufficient scientific facts to establish the theory of evolution.”
He also argues that “the most grievous threat that we have today is this imperialistic judiciary, this judicial monarchy that has it wrong on what the First Amendment’s about and has an objective to create religious sterility in the public square, which is wholly inconsistent with the Founding Fathers’ view.” Pruitt is describing a secular government, which is precisely what the Founders not only wanted, but what they actually designed in our godless Constitution.
FFRF has been on to Pruitt right from the start.
On Jan. 13, 2017, FFRF sent a series of questions to the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. The first group of questions fell under a heading that sums up all the problems we’re seeing with Pruitt: “Conflicts between your [Pruitt’s] personal religion and secular law.”
We laid out the many times Pruitt has chosen his religion over his oath of office. After the Oklahoma Supreme Court ruled that a Ten Commandments monument in front of the Oklahoma Capitol was unconstitutional, Pruitt, in his official capacity as the attorney general of Oklahoma, said, “quite simply, the Oklahoma Supreme Court got it wrong,” argued that the court’s order was unconstitutional, and filed a new, frivolous legal action in order to defy that order.
Also as Oklahoma attorney general, Pruitt sent a letter to public school superintendents defending the practice of outside adults, often part of Gideons International, entering Oklahoma public schools to proselytize students. He promised to represent any school in court should they be sued for violating students’ rights of conscience, even though the illegality of proselytizing students in public schools is well established.
Pruitt also said that public high schools can organize prayer at athletic events, which conflicts with two Supreme Court opinions.
When the U.S. Supreme Court declared gay marriage a constitutional right, he claimed that the Supreme Court decision “threatens the ability of citizens to live out their faith in the public square.”
Nothing about Pruitt’s taped conversations is surprising. They all feature Pruitt again believing that his religion is superior to the law of the land.
We do not live in a theocracy, but that is what Pruitt would have us think. By his own admission, he is running the EPA in accordance with biblical principles. The justified fervor that the Politico tapes have generated shows the importance of FFRFs work.
Often maligned as “un-American,” the Freedom From Religion Foundation defends the Constitution and one of its core principles: the separation of state and church. With Pruitt, that work is more vital than ever.
Photo by Lorie Shaull via Wikipedia under CC BY-SA 2.0
